Abstract
Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a progressive disease of pulmonary vessels that can increase right ventricular afterload. Although pulmonary artery (PA) impedance is important to understand dynamic characteristic of PA, changes in the PA impedance in PH are not well known due to the lack of a proper experimental system to examine the PA impedance in animals. We are developing a servo-control system to impose desired PA impedance on in situ rat right ventricle. In open-chest rats, the servo-pump was connected to the left PA. Using target PA impedance, the desired PA pressure waveform was calculated from measured PA flow. The servo-system controlled PA to achieve the desired PA waveform and thus the desired PA impedance (Figure).
